Legislators fear number of farms in state is dwindling

ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer
Joel Rotz, state government relations director of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, talks about new state laws and farming issues that local farmers are concerned about Thursday during a Farmer's Breakfast at Tom's Kitchen Family Restaurant in Sugarloaf Township.

Nourishing farms takes the right economic climate and a sprinkling of youth, candidates for state representative in the 116th Legislative District said.

"Farms are dwindling. Farms are dying off â¦ We can start exposing children to agriculture," state Rep. Tarah Toohil, a Republican running for a second term, said Thursday after hosting a breakfast for farmers at Tom's Kitchen in Sugarloaf Township.

Challenger Ransom Young, a Democrat, attended the breakfast because he is a part-time farmer on the land that's been in his family for generations.

Looking across the breakfast tables, Young saw mostly gray-haired farmers and wondered who will feed the next generation.

"The state has to come up with programs that entice people to stay on the farm," Young said.

Agriculture is the largest industry in Pennsylvania, and the state Secretary of Agriculture George Greig told the breakfast crowd about the PA Preferred logo, a blue keystone with a gold checkmark, which lets shoppers buy goods from Pennsylvania farms and businesses. The state also allocated more money for 4-H Clubs and fairs such as the Bloomsburg Fair that resumed this year after flooding canceled it last year.

The legislature this year revoked the inheritance tax on farms passing from one generation to another within families.

Toohil and Young seek to represent the 116th District, which contains Hazleton and surrounding farming areas in the townships of Butler, where both candidates live, Sugarloaf, Foster and Black Creek.

Toohil voted to abolish the inheritance tax for farmers. Toohil said she supports funding to preserve farmland and a change that would allow farmers to drive agricultural vehicles for longer distances on public roads.

Farmers markets like one sponsored downtown by the Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce help growers find customers and connect visitors from children to adults to the local farming community, Toohil said.

The Agriculture Department's mobile ag lab will visit the Valley and Drums elementary schools this fall. After the bus containing the lab arrives, students can do experiments.

"It allows children in the schools to learn about the industry," Toohil said.

Young said he, too, supports the rollback of the inheritance tax, which he said was long overdue.

His farm enrolled in a program to preserve farmland, and Young wants to ensure that funding for preserving farmland remains in future budgets. Last year, Gov. Tom Corbett proposed putting money set aside for farmland preservation from a tobacco tax into the general budget. The measure failed, and the funding this year remains about the same as last year at $20.5 million, Mark O'Neill of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau said in an email.

Meanwhile, Young told how his nephew, Karl Sharpe, a 38-year-old engineer from Easton, has been working weekends on family's farm while starting a vineyard.

"It's a niche product that we hope to expand," Young said.

Sharpe is the fifth generation of the family to farm on the land, and each generation specialized in a different product.

"You have to keep up with the times," Young said.

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

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